Terry Gross

I'm really enjoying this.

And you play an investigative journalist for a kind of underground paper.

I can't remember whether you correct the person, whether he says it's a magazine.

Yeah, he calls it a paper, and you say, no, it's a long-form magazine.

And you are very, very eccentric.

You investigate power and corruption in Tulsa, where this is set.

And you also break all the rules of journalism.

You get beaten up a lot.

And unlike the tough guys in a lot of hard-boiled film noir and in novels, when you get beaten up, you hurt.

You're crying out in pain.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I want to play a short scene.

This is toward the beginning of the first episode.

So you're investigating a powerful, wealthy guy who runs an investment company, has been buying up a lot of black owned businesses.

And you're wondering, like, what's this about?

Tracy Letts plays that guy.

You've walked into his office, dressed way too casually for a meeting like this, and you start looking around the room, picking up things, examining them, sniffing the carafe of brandy, and being intentionally sarcastic and rude.

So let's pick it up with the clip.

So, Ethan Hawke, the series is inspired by film noir, but it's also kind of a satire of the genre.